


Served

by Mari_who



Category: Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23019022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari_who/pseuds/Mari_who
Summary: A punishment.  A visitor.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43





	Served

It was so cold there at the roof of the world.

The air was thin and at night the stars grew massive, they flickered and spun and seemed closer every hour, coming to consume him with blue fire. It felt like he already burned with it. 

No animals came there; no plants grew so high; glaciers creaked and slid but even they were far below him, shunning the height. Clouds whipped past beneath his feet.

His fingers blackened, withered, and the skin of his face peeled and fluttered in the wind. No healing came to him. Every day the sun wheeled past on its endless journey, and he screamed out to it, but pointlessly. The sun ignored him. Its rays burned him without bringing warmth and the snow reflected back its brightness to scorch his eyes.

His eyes froze open.

The adamant chains that held him were colder than anything he'd ever known. At first he fought them, knowing it was hopeless, a blind animal panic falling over him. For a month, he tried to break away, as the moon cycled from full to full above him.

He would have broken or bitten his wrists but there was no reach or leverage for it.

The stone under his back was immobile, implacable.

Storms came from time to time, howling, lashing him with rain that froze instantly against his withered skin and stayed for days.

He starved and thirsted, froze and burned, wept, pleaded, cursed, shrieked for mercy or revenge or for death.

A year passed.

There was a place in his mind that was warm, and gradually he sank into it, away from the mountain. The body was not him, it was a chunk of frozen meat on a rock, far away. 

One day he realized someone was speaking to him. A softness was against his face, and from that spot his whole body was slowly filled with light and warmth. His dessicated tissues filled out, regrowing where this harsh world had grated them away.

He opened his eyes.

Persephone stood before him in a little pool of meltwater, a tiny wild rose against the snow; it was her hand against his cheek and her power, resonant, that healed him.

She held a flask to his mouth, and he drank deep of the warm, sweet liquid within.

"Happy anniversary, Apollo," she told him.

And as he remembered, as he screamed in the abject horror of knowing what had been done to him, and why - as her healing power withdrew and, renewed, he felt the dry whip of freezing air against his skin, as cold and sharp as the first time - she rose into the air and, without looking back, flew away.

That night it rained.

**Author's Note:**

> Served as in how to serve that dish called Revenge, not as in "you got served!" Though that fits too, I suppose.
> 
> Chaining-to-mountains seems to be a Thing in this pantheon so I just went with it.
> 
> I'm not sure if graphically described freezer burn counts as violence but I put the warning in just in case.


End file.
